


Hurtin' in an Old Familiar Way

by punk_rock_yuppie



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Aged up Five, Caretaking, Drinking, F/M, Fluff, Sweet, references to alcoholism, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 11:52:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18051998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punk_rock_yuppie/pseuds/punk_rock_yuppie
Summary: Five gets drunk. Vanya helps him out.





	Hurtin' in an Old Familiar Way

**Author's Note:**

> back at it again with the ship i've lovingly dubbed fiveya. this can be seen as a continuation to _[and i could see you kissing me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18006146)_ , but you don't have to read that one to understand this! just some fluff, a little bit of hurt. good stuff.
> 
> also! i picture brendon urie as my face cast for older five, just in case you wanna picture the same!! 
> 
> thanks to hannah for beta'ing!
> 
> enjoy!

“Beautiful,” Five slurs.

Vanya shakes her head, fondly exasperated. “You’re drunk.”

It’s a familiar tit-for-tat, well-rehearsed and tired between them. Five grins and the muscles in his face feel funny, as they always do when he’s had a smidge too much to drink. Vanya’s right, he _is_ drunk. Not that he’d admit it, even to her.

“Not drunk,” he declares before promptly tripping over his own feet. He stumbles and Vanya struggles to help him stay standing, a challenge given that she’s nearly a foot shorter than him these days. The growth spurts were a _bitch_ , but Five’s pretty sure he’s taller in this timeline than the one in the apocalypse. Maybe it’s the nutrition. He could probably break down the logistics behind it, if he really wanted…

“Five, are you listening to me?”

“Of course,” he replies immediately.

Vanya sighs. “No you weren’t.” But she’s not mad at him. She never seems to be. Not since he came back, since they saved the world.

He tilts his head to look at her profile, her slight features and pale skin. “Beautiful,” he murmurs again.

Her cheeks tinge pink. Five grins. “Shut up, Five,” she tells him. Her arm around his waist tightens and she walks a little faster. “Why’d you call me, anyway?”

“You’re the only one I can trust.” It’s a parody of the time he broke into her apartment, oh-so-long ago. Or maybe, not so long ago, since it’s never happened, technically speaking ( _god_ time travel is fucked). Five laughs to himself and can feel Vanya’s eyes burning against his skin. “I wanted to see you,” he amends after a beat of silence.

Her face turns splotchy with the growing blush. “You see me every day.”

That’s true, and he tells her so. “I want to see you _more_.”

“Five…”

They’re finally upon the mansion, its wrought iron gates with the familiar umbrella symbol looming over them. Five sneers as Vanya opens the gate to let them inside; he’s never cared much for their dad’s decor choices. He loses himself in his thoughts—part equations, part scorn at the decor, part enamored ramblings he’d never share aloud about Vanya.

He’s a bit of a sap, so sue him.

“You’re ridiculous,” Vanya breathes before warning him, “Stairs.”

The stairs are harder, and Five gets about three steps up before exhaling loudly. “Fuck _this_.” He wraps an arm around Vanya’s waist and grins at her startled squeak. He pulls her to his chest and she peers up at him, a curious eyebrow raised. “Hold on,” he tells her.

She’s barely started to say, “Five, no, wait!” when space and time swallows them up and deposits them in his room, sending them stumbling onto his bed. She yelps again and Five twists so he lands on the bed first, and Vanya crashes into his front. She catches herself just in time to keep their noses from colliding painfully.

Five grins and lets out a chuckle, one that grows louder as Vanya wrinkles her nose.

“Your breath,” she complains as she sits up.

The arm Five’s got slung around her waist shifts until his hand just barely rests on the curve of her hip. She stills between his bent knees. He misses her warmth immediately.

Vanya stares down at him. “You’re on your own for getting into pajamas.”

He brings a hand to his already loosened tie at his neck, and Vanya steps away from the bed. He sits up to reach for her. “Vanya, wait.”

She doesn’t turn back to him but doesn’t move quite out of his reach, yet. He can tell her arms are crossed over her chest unhappily.

“I don’t enjoy you like this,” she tells him in a gentle tone. His fingertips fall short of brushing her back. “You know that.”

He does. It’s a conversation they’ve had more times than he can bear to count. He knows, deep in the back of his mind, he knows he’s got a problem. Delores always thought so, too. He drops his gaze and his hands to his lap.

“You should get changed. Go to bed,” Vanya suggests in her quiet, delicate voice. “Sleep it off.”

Five nods. “Yeah.”

Vanya looks over her shoulder at him. Slowly, she turns to face him again. He watches her from the corner of his eye as she gets a little closer and reaches out to him. She cups his cheek and presses a single kiss to his forehead. It’s dry and sweet and he leans into the touch.

“Don’t go,” he pleads, laying his hand over hers.

“Get changed,” she says again. “Then we’ll see.”

With that she turns away and slips out of his room, the door falling shut behind her.

Five sits up sluggishly, the alcohol addling his brain. He struggles to get his tie off and then his button-down shirt. He leaves the undershirt on before shucking his jeans—and god, jeans, how strange he still finds them. He got so used to those stupid school shorts in the apocalypse, then used to scavenging for whatever clothes would keep him safe from the elements. Then, at the Commission, dressing in jeans would’ve been seen as downright blasphemous.

He quite likes jeans, these days. Sturdy, different. He kicks them off and hunts around for a pair of sweats. It takes him a bit longer, because he finally has to clamber off his bed and stumble around his room. He’s not sure how he had a better alcohol tolerance in his fifteen-year-old body than his thirty-year-old one, but his brain is too foggy to figure it out right now.

A knock on the door has his head whipping up. “Five?” Vanya calls out.

“One sec,” he hollers back. He finally makes it to the heap of not-quite-dirty clothes that sits by his closet and grabs the first pair of track pants that he sees. Then, he staggers over to the door and pulls it open.

Vanya smiles at him. “You did it,” she teases.

Five smirks. “Of course I did.”

Vanya rolls her eyes and shoves at his chest. “Bed, now.”

Five goes willingly, pleased at the knowledge that Vanya isn’t gone quite yet. He falls onto the bed, on his back. folds his arms behind his head, crosses his legs at the ankle, and looks up at Vanya as she stands beside his bed.

“You’re a wreck.” She reaches over him and pulls at his blanket until it comes unstuck from under Five’s body. She drags it over him and he can only watch, drunk and mesmerized, as she diligently tucks him in.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Five says.

“I wanted to,” is her simple reply. “You won’t choke on your own vomit, right?”

“Please,” Five scoffs. Then, at Vanya’s harder look, he amends. “Of course not.”

She pats his chest over the blanket. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Five.”

Five waits and holds his breath as Vanya leans down and presses a feather-light kiss to his lips. He kisses back but hardly gets a chance before she pulls away. There’s a twinkle in her eye as she grins at him, and then she’s gone, out of his room like a ghost.

Five sinks into his bed and stares up at the ceiling. He clenches his fingers around the edge of his blanket. He thinks of Delores, all the times she lectured him about his drinking. He thinks about Vanya’s sweet, kind stare.

_Maybe I should think about getting sober,_ he thinks.

_Maybe I should ask Klaus for pointers_.

He falls asleep laughing.


End file.
